Dutch politicians gave each other high-fives when they won a contest to host the European Medicines Agency last month, but not everyone in the capital is celebrating the expected influx of highly-paid pharmaceutical experts

Amsterdam’s residents and media, already sick of the numbers of tourists searching out stag-do strip joints on their streets, are increasingly vexed about another group of visitors – white-collar, expatriate workers.

People walk in a shopping street in the center of Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 30, 2017. Picture taken November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman

“A Nice Brexit Trophy, But Can The City Handle It?” newspaper NRC Handelsblad said in a headline, referring to the decision to move the regulatory agency from London to Amsterdam after Britain leaves the EU.

The EMA will come with around 900 staff – a wonderful economic boost, according to supporters of the move. Detractors say it’s just another group of foreigners with big pay packets driving up rents and property prices.

“Home Buyers Will Pay The Price For Drugs Agency In Amsterdam,” said national broadcaster NOS.

Trees are illuminated near a canal in central Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 30, 2017. Picture taken November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman

On social media, many also mourned the death of the city’s free-wheeling and edgy spirit, killed off, they said, by the likes of the EMA’s army of bureaucrats.

The sanitation of Amsterdam has been going on for more than a decade.

Advertising campaigns have focused on the city’s canals, the Anne Frank House, the museums packed with Van Gogh and Rembrandt’s greatest works.

Legislators have helped the re-branding by shuttering a third of the city’s brothels in 2008 and starting a program to close marijuana cafes near schools in 2011.